Their techniques married scientific methods with common sense; everything was monitored and analysed, but John Todd believed that natural systems could be duplicated, harnessed, and connected.
[2] After its demise, former New Alchemists Hilda Maingay and Earle Barnhart established The Green Center, a non-profit educational institute that evolved from NAI, with the aim of continuing its mission.
"Among our major tasks is the creation of ecologically derived human support systems - renewable energy, agriculture, aquaculture, housing and landscapes.
The strategies we research emphasize a minimal reliance on fossil fuels and operate on a scale accessible to individuals, families and small groups.
The groupings of plants, animals, soil and insects are selected so that closed loops of life cycles, materials, water, and energy are created, and require minimal inputs from outside the system.
They emulate natural rhythms of growth and cycling of nutrients, meaning the practice of organic farming, the use of renewable energy, creation of sustainable architecture, and ensuring the restoration of ecosystems.
[2] Over time, financial support dried up as governments changed, and, after being converted into a small hotel and restaurant in the early 1980s and various other attempts to save it, it was demolished around 2000.